Man vs. Machine: The Psychology Behind our Fear of Robots

Man vs. Machine: The Psychology Behind our Fear of Robots

HitchBOT was supposed to be a “fun, social experiment”. The hitchhiking robot was beheaded in Philadelphia after traveling through several countries as well as Boston and New York in the U.S.. CNN reported HitchBOT’s creators said; “HitchBOT was a social experiment to test human psychology” (CNN, August 4,2015).

A similar scene took place in the film Chappie where the robot was beaten up by people on the street. However, we are far from the world of Chappie; where robots were depicted as having taken over many human roles in society.

As a Philadelphian I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t have the chance to run into HitchBOT, and that someone would spoil something that should be seen as novel and fun.

I started to wonder: why?

Most likely in this instance it was just a random act of violence, or someone getting their kicks, and HitchBOT obviously felt no pain during it’s beheading. However, there seems to be a growing fear, or at least a general uneasiness when it comes to the “rise of the robots”. Which is odd, given how much we already rely on technology.

However, this dismal outlook on the future of robots may be more psychological than we think.

Here are three potential underlying reasons behind the human fear of robots.

Uncanny Valley 

‘Uncanny valley‘ was a term founded by the roboticist Masahiro Mori. It speaks of the revulsion, and, for lack of a better term, creeped-out feeling that people get toward CGI or robots, whose appearance and movements seem human but are not quite there (“Uncanny Valley” n.d.) For example; a robot that looks human but has very mechanical movements or strange features. It’s been seen in movies, such as The Polar Express, and in many Japanese-made robots.

One reason behind the steep drop off from empathy to revulsion when a robot falls into the uncanny valley is a concept known as mortality salience. For humans, seeing the uncanny robot plays on subconscious fears of replacement and death (“Uncanny Valley” n.d.).

The idea that robots, by way of artificial intelligence or what have you, are here to replace us seems validated when echoed by people like Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates (BBC, December 2, 2014).

The reason why this phenomena might cause a fear of death requires a deeper delve into the human mind. Irvin Yalom, an existential psychiatrist, has suggested that humans create a psychological defense mechanism of “specialness”; meaning the belief that old age and death affect everyone except oneself. He makes the point that uncanny robots might challenge this idea, perpetuating human fears and anxieties in an existential manner (“Uncanny Valley n.d.).

The Frankenstein Complex

Issac Asimov coined the term ‘The Frankenstein complex’; which is the fear that technology and humans creations, such as robots, will ‘turn’ on their creator.

This fear can be found commonly in science fiction and acts as something of a cautionary tale that man should not “play God”. It is the belief that, despite our best efforts, something will go wrong. This idea was alluded to in the highly acclaimed sci-fi film Ex Machina.

While the nature of the film is intellectual, the final moments fall back into the Frankenstein complex, complete with the creation turning against it’s creator.

People also no doubt fear that their own faults and shortcomings will be reflected in their creations.

In a proverbial way, man killed God and we fear robots will do the same to us.

The Media

Lastly, The Media perpetuation, especially in western media, of robots as antagonists surely plays a major role in the fears associated with robots.

Over the past 50 years, countless sci-fi films, video games and television shows have pitted humans and robots against each other. You can probably list at least ten off the top of your head without even trying.

Even in the news, there are stories that sensationalize the coming “robot revolution.”

When a worker in a Volkswagen plant was crushed by an auto parts robot, the headlines of many news websites read “robot kills man….”. Despite the fact that human error was the cause of death.

Even a news outlet as reputable as Time magazine made the story seem sinister.

If one were to Google “should we fear robots”; it yields countless results, with the majority of the articles stating reasons why we should fear robots, compared to the minuscule amount that state why we shouldn’t.

We fear robots are here to replace us in the workforce, on the battleground, or, to take it even further; as the dominant race on this planet (Good, 1965).

The media is so saturated by this fear, that it seems our society is programmed to believe these scenarios, in an almost prophetic manner.

We are made to believe that a human level of intelligence or even super intelligence in robots is something definitive, not speculative, When in truth we are still very far off from the prospect (Armstrong & Sotala, 2012)

We allow the media to drive this dystopian, xenophobic future into our minds and accept it as our imminent fate, when all they want is to sell a good story, whatever the medium.

What Does it all Mean

Many people fear that we will be responsible for extinction of our own race. Before robots, it was nuclear weapons, and before that, it was mass firearm production. There will always be something.

• It is people who will design and program the robots and who will determine how far they are to advance.
• It is also people who will develop the rules and guidelines in regards to robots.

McCauley, L. (2007) the Frankenstein Complex and Asimov’s three laws of robotics retrieved from https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Workshops/2007/WS-07-07/WS07-07-003.pdf

Armstrong, S., & Sotala, K. (2012) How We’re Predicting AI—Or Failing To               retrieved from https://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf